The design for this pattern came about last year and was modified to create Monster Leaves, a hand embroidery pattern to kick off 2017.

My mom asked me to come up with two embroidered leaves for her to frame and hang above the bed in her spare room. Delicious monster leaves are nice and chunky, making them ideal to fill with stitches, and we matched the thread colours to the decor.

The design stuck with me and I decided to adapt it - making the leaves smaller to create a single design and reducing the number of colours to a few bold, juicy greens - to create a pattern.

The leaves are filled with a number of different stitches, making this a good pattern for either learning new stitches or practising ones you may already know. A new one for me was petal stitch, which I suspect may be cropping up again sometime as I thoroughly enjoyed doing it.